Wish You Were Italian (35 page)

“Since when do you like classic horror movies?” His voice has that old familiar drawl to it, that same twang I loved when he whispered to me, his breath hot on my ear. His family is from Texas. They moved to Washington State six years ago, but he’s never let go of the accent.

“Since when do you care what I like?” I scoop at a pile of manure near his toes, daring him to stand still as it slides dangerously close to his battered Justin cowboy boots. He doesn’t move. “I mean, I was
just
getting used to the silent treatment.”

“Meh, I got bored,” he says.

Bored. I scowl. “I’m sure there’s a
real
flag somewhere in desperate need of your allegiance.”

I scoop up another forkful of soiled bedding. Maybe he thought he’d get away with just waltzing up, that I’d somehow forget what he did, like I’d fall at his feet at the first sign of his interest.

When I look up at him again, he hasn’t budged, he’s just chewing on his lip. He licks his lip, and for a second I forget I’m staring, thinking about how it felt when we’d kissed, when he’d traced his tongue across
my
lips. When he grins, I realize he’s caught me.

Ugh. I should not be thinking of how good he is at kissing. Actually, scratch that. I should be thinking of how good he is at kissing
other girls
. That made it pretty easy to stay angry. Like he did in the halls the first day of school last fall. I wore this adorable Zac Brown Band T-shirt because he said they were his favorite band, and I was practically bursting with excitement to see him after a few days apart … and then I saw him, but it didn’t go the way I’d pictured.

He was leaning in to kiss
her
, while I stood there dumbfounded. He knew exactly what he was doing because midway through their steamy makeout session, he saw me staring, a strange gleam in his eyes as he watched the way I unraveled. It was like he enjoyed watching me shatter, just like little boys love burning ants with magnifying glasses.

And it sucks to be the ant. I am
so over
being the ant.

“Nah, you’re a little more … lively.”

I snort, shaking my head. Lively. Yeah, I could show him lively.

“What?” he asks, crossing his arms and leaning against the doorway. The effort makes his muscles bulge. He probably practices the move in his mirror in the hopes of using it to ensnare his next summer fling.

I toss the pitchfork onto the heaping wheelbarrow. “Just leave me alone, okay?” I grab the cart’s handle and yank.

But he doesn’t move, and I back right up into him, our bodies colliding. Instead of stepping aside, he grabs my elbows to keep me from knocking him completely over, and then actually removes me from the stall and slides me into the aisle, like I’m a kitten that’s run into his path.

Then he turns and easily pulls the overladen cart over the bump, onto the smooth cement of the aisle. The stall door screeches as he rolls it shut.

“I still have to put pellets in there,” I start.

“I’ll get it.”

I stare at him, unwilling to believe he’d volunteer to take on even a tiny portion of my workload without wanting something in return. “Well, you just go zero to sixty in about five seconds, don’t you?”

He flashes me a wolfish smile, the one that makes him seem half-dangerous, half-sexy. But now I know what really lurks beneath all those muscles and cowboy swagger, and his smile is no longer so attractive.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks, tipping the rim of his cowboy hat back far enough that I can see into his intense brown eyes. He’s … irritated.

Good.

I narrow my own eyes and match his look. “The silent treatment, to mockery, to doing me favors,” I say, ticking them off on my fingers. “Before you turned on the roller coaster, you could have at least warned me to keep my hands and feet in the car at all times.”

He huffs. “Can’t a guy do a girl a favor?”

“No.” I laugh, and not in a pretty way. “Not you, anyway.”

Dang. I had wanted to be aloof. Unaffected. I’m screwing it up.

He shrugs, totally unbothered by my visceral response. “Fine then. Do it yourself,” he says. But he doesn’t move out of my way or open the stall door either. Instead, his eyes sweep over
my now-dirty polo shirt, down my legs, and then back up again before he smirks. “What’s with the getup?”

I grit my teeth and check out my outfit. I’m in my Serenity Ranch polo, as required, along with my jean shorts, but I have lime-green leggings underneath, and my cowboy boots don’t match any of my clothes—they’re powder blue. It’s like my outfit is a mullet—business on the top, party on the bottom.

“Can’t wear plain old shorts in a saddle, you know that,” I say, like he’s being stupid. “It pinches.”

“Right. And regular jeans would just be too …”

“Boring?” I say, throwing his words back at him.

“Uh-huh, and being a freak show—”

My anger explodes. “What do you want, Landon? Hurting me last year wasn’t enough and now you’ve gotta waltz in here and insult me?”

Crap. I wasn’t planning to admit how much he hurt me. I’m ruining all of this. Bailey’s going to laugh me out of our cabin later.

In response, he crosses his arms and waits as if he was the one to ask the question and he’s expecting an answer, but I have nothing else to say. And then he just shrugs and walks away, whistling an all-too-familiar tune.

Oh say can you seeeeeeee
.

Ugh.

NOTHING IS MORE OFF LIMITS THAN
YOUR BEST FRIEND’S CRUSH . . .
ESPECIALLY IF HE’S YOUR NEW COSTAR!

Read on for a glimpse at another romance filled with
paparazzi, on-set drama, and a delicious love triangle.

EMMA

“
Celebrity Seeker
claims that I’m dating Troy again,” I say as I skim the pages of the gossip magazine. Tabloids are scattered like fall leaves all over Rachel’s bedroom, and I want to rake them up and stuff them into trash bags. “How stupid do they think I am?”

I haven’t talked to Troy since he shattered my car window three months ago. Rachel doesn’t know anything about that, though. No one does, and I have to keep it that way.

“I’d feel bad for you, Emma, but some of us don’t have any guys to ignore.” Rachel has her back to me, admiring the collection of men who cover her otherwise lavender walls. Most of the space is taken up by carefully cut out magazine pages featuring a male model she calls The Bod. “And worse, the only guy I’m dying to date doesn’t know I exist. Literally.”

“I doubt he’s worth dying for,” I say. “If a boy looks like he belongs in a museum, there’s a pretty good chance his head is solid marble.”

Rachel huffs at me, offended, as if she actually knows him. Or even his name.

I leave her bouncy desk chair—great for girls with energy to burn—to study a close-up of The Bod’s face. “At the very least,” I go on with a teasing tone, “those puffy lips are airbrushed.”

Chancing a peek at Rachel, I find her bright-green eyes narrowed at me. “You know,” she says, “for someone who’s on
People
magazine’s Most Beautiful Young Celebrities list, you’re awfully critical of beautiful people.”

I suppose being my best friend for over a decade gives her the right to call me out on things like this. And Rachel is all about straight talk and honesty, which is usually a good thing.

My life doesn’t always feel genuine, even when cameras aren’t rolling.

Whenever I return to my hometown in Fayetteville, Arkansas, I expect the world to somehow seem real again, but work still has a way of taking over. Today especially, because a full five minutes hasn’t passed without me checking my e-mail. The final details for the new TV series I’m starting next month are being sent out today, including the casting choices.

The scent of coconut-and-lime body spray wafts toward me. Rachel snaps her fingers in front of my face. “Are you even listening?”

Yes and no
. She’s been going on about the endless charms of her paperweight soul mate. “All I’m saying is that guys who look like The Bod are usually the most overrated gimmicks on the planet,” I tell her. “And crappy boyfriend material. Trust me.”

I hear a screen door squeak open, and a canary-like chirp belonging to Rachel’s mom instantly echoes in the house. Trina enters the room and says, “Oh, Emma honey, have
we
got a big surprise!”

For as long as I can remember, Trina has dressed like she’s forty-going-on-sixteen. At the moment she’s in black skinny jeans and a plum tee with a glittery fleur-de-lis stretched way too tight over her five-thousand-dollar chest. Trina’s curly platinum hair matches her daughter’s, but everything about Rachel’s beauty is perfectly natural.

“You’re just gonna die!” Trina adds.

My mother is right behind Trina and shoots her a
please stop
look, but I seem to be the only one who notices. Typical for her, Mom is wearing a white button-down shirt and gray tweed slacks, looking like she walked out of a Neiman Marcus window display. She wouldn’t be caught dead in Trina’s leopard print stilettos. But despite being polar opposites, they’ve been going out for regular lunches since Rachel and I first met in a community acting class.

I sometimes wonder if Mom only does it to stay on the good side of a careless gossip who might be too close to me. Or maybe Mom just wants to keep up on what’s
really
going on in my personal life. She likely gets more from Trina, via Rachel, than she does from me.

Trina is still grinning so widely that every tooth in her mouth is showing, but my mom’s smile seems fake, and her lashes are batting way too fast to be simple blinks. “I just heard from the studio,” she says.

I only stare at her for a second. “But … why wasn’t I on the e-mail list?”

“I’ll forward you a copy, Emma. I always do.”

That’s not the point, and she knows it. I had asked her to tell the studio to put me on the direct list, and she obviously didn’t. Like a lot of parents in this business, my mom became my manager when I landed my first big job, so
everything
goes through her. But now
that I’m finally an official adult, I can hire a new management team if I want to, a team who would at least agree that I should know-before the rest of the world—what’s going on in my career. Like me, Mom must realize this isn’t working anymore, but she hasn’t even mentioned the possibility of a new manager, like it isn’t something I’d consider anyway.

As if she could never imagine me making a mature decision without her.

Mom tacks on a sigh. “We should head home so we can discuss this casting.”

“I want to stay. Just tell me what the e-mail says.”

“I’m dying to know too,” Rachel adds. “We’ve been waiting all day.”

Trina whispers something to Rachel, then Rachel looks at me with her mouth half open, her eyes bulging. “Holy crap, Emma! You’re gonna FREAK!”

Perfect. Now even Rachel knows before I do.

“Can we borrow this room for a minute?” I ask.

Trina and Rachel appear disappointed by the request but finally step into the hallway, whispering again. My mom shuts the bedroom door and pulls out her phone. “I had hoped we were past this nonsense,” she mutters, “but you won’t believe who’s playing—”

I snatch the phone from her hand, open the e-mail from the studio, and read out loud. “Executive Producer Steve McGregor will launch the production of
Coyote Hills
in Tucson, Arizona, the second week of July … table read … camera tests … I’ll go back to that later … Okay, here it is: one male lead is still in negotiations.” Ugh. This is practically code for
casting problems
. “The remaining cast is as follows: Eden will be played by Emma Taylor. The
role of Kassidy will be played by Kimmi Weston.” I have no idea who Kimmi is, so I glance at my mom before going on. She’s never heard of her either. “And the role of Bryce will be played by Brett Crawford.”

I drop the phone.

I want to stomp on it. Scream at it!

Or possibly hug it and jump up and down.

I’m not sure which yet.

“You see?” Mom says. “This is why I wanted to tell you privately.”

My arms are as limp as overcooked fettuccini, but I manage to scoop up the phone. “Okay, yeah. Him,” I say, going for indifference. “A bit of a shock, but whatever.”

Mom puts a hand on her hip.
Here we go
. “Emma, you know how tired I am of dealing with high-publicity romances,” she begins, in full-blown managerial mode. “The last two years have been ridiculous, putting out one tabloid fire after another. You’re at a crossroads here and have a chance to prove yourself as a serious actress. Brett Crawford is the worst sort of boy for you to get involved with, so don’t even consider dating him.”

Does she really think
I
would want to go through all that crap again? On-set romances are usually total disasters, and not just for me. Until last spring I was on a primetime drama that, despite sky-high ratings, was cancelled due to conflict on the set. I played the president’s daughter, but the actor playing the president was caught having a real-life relationship with the actress who played the first lady—and unfortunately, she also happened to be our executive producer’s wife. It wasn’t pretty.